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Race of the Year & Female POY.....

Monday, 18 November 2013 06:10

Triathletes Choice Race of the Year - The way this award is determined is as follows: Only events receiving 40-or-more votes are eligible for Top 5 placement. For those races, we divide the number of voters by the number of finishers to determine its percentage of voting participants. Typically a winning race receives support from 13-16% of its participants. Approximately 1100 * votes were distributed among forty-three races, six of which received 40-or-more votes.

From one-to-five, here's how this year's top races fared:

1. SUPERIORMAN - 56 votes/285 finishers = 19.6%

2. TRINONA - 76 votes / 705 finishers = 10.7%

3. BREWHOUSE - 41 votes / 377 finishers = 10.6%

4. YWCA WOMEN'S TRIATHLON - 96 votes / 949 finishers = 10.1%

5. MAPLE GROVE TRIATHLON - 51 votes / 1303 finishers = 4% ....

* The actual number of legitmate votes is not known. It is believed that most instances of "Ballot Box Stuffing" were discovered and deleted.

Performance of the Year - Women - The Committee concurred that two performances deserved trophies this year, one for short course, wherein super sophomore Heather Lendway WON the USAT AG National Championships in record time, and long course, wherein Michelle Andres (photo L) became the first MInnesota woman to crack the 10-hour mark at IM, doing so at our sport's most prestigious annual event, the Hawaiian Ironman World Championship. Two unprecedented efforts that reset the Olympic and IM bars in our state.

If you had to pick one of these performances to win the POY, which would it be, and why? Use the COMMENT feature below to respond.

Comments

I feel Heather won this award without much doubt. Few dispute how fast and talented guys like David Thompson, Dan Hedgecock, and Patrick Parish are, but none of them were ever able to win USAT Nationals. Heather not only beat all of the other ladies but she did so by more than two minutes in a two hour race. Her margin of victory is the amazing metric, not just her time. It is so difficult to put together a great race in Kona; and Michelle put together an amazing race! But there were about a dozen amateur women in Kona with faster times than Michelle. Michelle has set a new standard for Ironman in MN, but Heather has set the new standard for Olympic Distance in the Country. Michelle deserved "Long course athlete of the Year" over my friend and stud athlete Matt Payne. Just my two cents. Congratulations to both of these impressive ladies on showing the guys how to race fast.

While I feel Lendaway's CR at AG Nat's is extremely impressive, I believe Michelle sub 10 HR finish in Hawaii is more deserving of the POY. When you compare the results of AG Nats last year to this year, times were slightly faster overall, and even for most of the elites that raced both courses. So when I take that into account, I feel that while both races were extremely amazing, Michelle's race stands out to me as the front runner